Jamestown

Α reconstructed appearance of Myrtis, an 11-year-old girl who died during the plague of Athens and whose skeleton was found in the Kerameikos mass grave, National Archaeological Museum of Athens

Just how pure is your raw water source? Do you trust it? Would you drink it? Join your Horrific History co-hosts, Eric Slyter and Jordan Watney, as they take several trips in the Horrific History time and space machine to look at cases in history when trusted water supplies turned deadly and how some earlier societies handled water quality concerns. Learn how waterborne diseases can help determine the outcome of a war, encourage societies to develop regulations on industry and even kill already starving settlers in a new (to them) land. We’ll also take a brief look at how people have viewed and measured water quality through history (hint: up until recent history water quality was assessed only by human senses), and natural contaminants which can be harmful (or deadly) when you’re drinking water to achieve that healthy glow.

How did scientists prove that typhoid helped determine the outcome of the Peloponnesian War between the Spartans and the Athenians around 430 BCE, and what conditions allowed it to help wipe out an estimated 1/3 of the population in Athens? Is it true that people in the middle ages only drank beer instead of water because the quality was so bad? What made the water so toxic […]

A facial reconstruction of “Jane of Jamestown” is seen during a news conference at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, Wednesday, May 1, 2013. Scientists announced during the news conference that they have found the first solid archaeological evidence that some of the earliest American colonists at Jamestown, Va., survived harsh conditions by turning to cannibalism presenting the discovery of the bones of a 14-year-old girl, “Jane” that show clear signs that she was cannibalized. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

From the last episode, we know Jamestown’s English settlers got their colony off on the wrong foot; this week, join your Horrific History co-hosts, Eric Slyter and Jordan Watney, as they get to the meat of the subject and explore both the period accounts of cannibalism in addition to the recent related archeological finds. What led the Jamestown colonists to experience such desperation that they would themselves engage in murder, grave-robbing, and the eating of human flesh? Which famous person from the colony wrote a book to profit off those same horrors?

We’ll also explore the more recent historical accounts of the 1972 Andes Flight Disaster, also referred to as the Miracle of the Andes, when 45 people aboard a small aircraft crashed atop an unnamed mountain (later named Glaciar de las Lágrimas, or Glacier of Tears) which straddled the remote mountainous border between Chile and Argentina. When the remaining survivors heard on the radio that the search parties had called off the rescue efforts, they had to give up hope or find a way to survive. Hear about the lengths they went to survive the crash and the journey to, without provisions or equipment, climb down a mountain to let the world know they were still alive and needed help. Could you go to the same lengths, eating your deceased family, friends, or even your wife? […]

Have you ever felt your body wasting away? Most of us know what it’s like when we forget to eat for too long, often described as the physical sensation of the stomach “eating itself.” But, what occurs in the body and mind when it’s true over a prolonged period? What more horrible stories from history can still be told about winter cannibalism? Join your Horrific History Podcast co-hosts, Eric Slyter and Jordan Watney, for the debut episode of Season 2 as they explore the gruesome effects of starvation and the events which would lead up to cannibalism in Jamestown!

Discover what scientists learned about prolonged semi-starvation through a World War II study called the Minnesota Starvation Experiment […]